Water change could send Coorong back to bad times

DROUGHT conditions could take us back to the “worst of times” for the Coorong, ecologist Associate Professor David Paton has warned.

TORY SHEPHERD POLITICAL EDITOR

The AdvertiserJune 2, 201411:25pm

DROUGHT conditions could take us back to the “worst of times” for the Coorong, ecologist Associate Professor David Paton has warned.

Despite decades of negotiations to save the River Murray, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the University of Adelaide’s Professor Paton say there is still not enough water flowing through.

The Government has released a new strategy report on the Murray-Darling Basin that says it would be possible to divert more money from water buybacks to spend on infrastructure. The cap on buybacks could go from 1500GL to 1300GL, or even lower.

South Australian Senator and water spokesman Simon Birmingham said the Government wanted to keep the level of buybacks “as low as possible” and pledged to deliver the Basin plan “in full and on time”.

But Prof Paton said the next drought could lead to the Coorong going back to “square one” unless more water was directly delivered to it.

“I think the environment is no better off than it was in the drought conditions of the last decade,” he said.

“There will probably be sufficient water so the Lakes won’t deteriorate quite so quickly but because the Coorong hasn’t recovered its resilience from the last drought … I think that’s going to start to hit pretty quickly, to take us back to the worst of times we had during the drought.”

ACF spokesman Jonathan La Nauze said the buyback reductions “slowed down the pace of water delivery” and showed the Government was “stretching the limits” of the basin plan.

He said the river needed more water sooner rather than later to undo decades of damage.

“Ultimately what matters is that the water ends up back in the river. My concern is that getting it there through infrastructure makes it more expensive (than buybacks) and therefore harder to achieve,” he said, adding that buying back water now while prices are low could help fortify the river against future droughts and the threat of climate change.

State River Murray Minister Ian Hunter said they had always had reservations about the cap on buybacks and the “rephasing” of water purchases.

“This latest announcement puts into doubt the Commonwealth’s ability to meet its targets by 2019 as promised under the Murray Darling Basin Plan,” he said.

Senator Birmingham said it made no difference to the environment if water came from buybacks or infrastructure, and that infrastructure would help farmers and achieve their goals “without undue economic or social harm”.

He said SA was on track to meeting water recovery targets, and had already done a lot of the “heavy lifting” on infrastructure, so there would now be more focus upstream.

Riverland MP and former chair of SA Murray Irrigators Tim Whetstone said money for infrastructure would keep local communities and the agricultural industry “alive and viable”.

SA Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused the Government of “selling South Australia up the river”.